The 2016 Asia Rugby Championship, or ARC, was the second annual tri-nations series for top-level

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

in Asia and the twenty-ninth continental championship for the

Asia Rugby Asia Rugby, formerly the Asian Rugby Football Union (ARFU), is the governing body of rugby union in Asia under the authority of World Rugby. Founded in 1968 by eight charter nations, the Union today has 36 member unions in countries across Asia, ...

nations. The

Asia Rugby Championship The Asia Rugby Championship, or ARC, is an annual rugby union competition held amongst national rugby sides within the Asia Rugby region. The competition was originally known as the Asian Rugby Football Tournament when founded in 1969, and was call ...

replaced the former Asian Five Nations in 2015, with only three nations competing in the top division instead of the previous five. The 2016 series included

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

and

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

. Other Asian nations competed in the lower division tournaments. The format of the competition is a double round-robin where the top-three nations play each other twice on a home and away basis. The team finishing on top of the standings is declared the winner, and the bottom-placed team is subject to a promotion-relegation play-off against the winner of Division 1, although this opportunity to challenge is often declined.

Teams

The teams involved, with their world rankings prior to the 2016 tournament in brackets:

Standings

Fixtures

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Top 3 Challenge

Division 1 winners, Malaysia did not choose to participate in the promotion-relegation play-off. Meaning the composition of next series of the tournament remains the same.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Asian 2016 rugby union tournaments for national teams 2016 in Asian rugby union

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

International rugby union competitions hosted by Hong Kong International rugby union competitions hosted by South Korea International rugby union competitions hosted by Japan 2015–16 in Japanese rugby union